Ask Alexa to play Arjun Reddy on Amazon Prime. You will meet Vijay Deverakonda as the bearded beast. So what is Kabir Singh doing when Arjun Reddy has not left the room yet?

What is Kabir Singh doing here when Arjun Reddy hasn't left the room yet?

Kabir Singh is not Arjun Reddy. Kabir Singh is more like Arjun Reddy's cousin. Shahid Kapoor said these words just a few weeks ago, while talking about his newest character, Kabir Singh. We had only seen the teaser of Kabir Singh, the Sandeep Reddy Vanga film, till then. Today, we have the trailer of Kabir Singh out. But is Kabir Singh Arjun Reddy's cousin? Hardly.

So why is he here when Arjun Reddy hasn't left the room. Switch on Amazon Prime and Arjun Reddy the bearded beast stares at you. The 2017 film that has gained a cult status is available for everyone to watch. How will the coming-soon Kabir Singh find a place on our to-watch lists? Kabir Singh is not even one of those films from the Bhatts in the 2000s that is 'an official remake' of some film from Korea or Timbuktu that you can fool an Indian audience with. It is 2019. Your target audience has access to 100MBPS internet and 1000GB per month data plans. You can ask Alexa to play Arjun Reddy and he is there, subtitles included. Braving a visit to the cinema has to be an experience worth it. It has to be a new story, a new treatment or a fresh story-telling approach.

Not the same two-year-old wine repackaged in a Hindi-labelled bottle.

As it is, Arjun Reddy is problematic at many levels. More so in 2019. We loved Arjun Reddy and hated it. The story had its emotions in place, but the toxic masculinity and normalisation of hitting the woman was just too much to take. Mind you, this wasn't one of those films that talked about a gangster's life (Raees, 2017) and thereby de-problematised the way the lead actress and our hero's wife was treated in the film. Arjun Reddy was a film about a brilliant medical student. We made peace with his anger issues. But hitting his girlfriend? AND the director giving us a happy ending? Not done.

The non Telugu-speaking crowd reacted to Arjun Reddy a little late. Once the film made its debut on digital platform Amazon Prime, most people with a subscription saw it. It was a much-talked-about film, after all.

Why Arjun Reddy hit the public psyche so hard is because of director Sandeep Reddy Vanga's protagonist. We have seen the hero falling in love, being rejected and drowning in alcohol since Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay told us of his Devdas. But Arjun Reddy left everyone shocked. Alcoholism met as***lism here and we had Arjun Reddy. The way he treated his girlfriend, the hitting, the demanding sex at knife-point, the way of referring to a woman. The film was misogynistic and problematic. And like all well-made misogynistic and problematic films, it became a hit. Then, a cult. (Remember the Pyaar Ka Punchnama series?)

The misogyny aside, Sandeep Reddy Vanga gave a classic story of love and loss wrapped in medical school lingo. It was a hit with the Engineering and Medical circuits, goes without saying. Every budding doctor saw an Arjun Reddy in themselves. Because this rugged, unkempt hero was 'cool' in the bad-boys-are-attractive way, toxic masculinity and its glorification be damned.

There was much talk when the remake of Arjun Reddy was announced. That 2017 film has attained cult status in these two years in between. The film was in Telugu. It starred newcomer Vijay Deverakonda as Arjun Reddy, the doctor who has control over neither his pyjamas nor his anger. Our volatile hero flies into a rage every time someone utters his name. He is a medical student who is yet to get his hormones in check. He loves like a fanatic and makes love like a beast. Why? Preeti. The reason behind his alcoholism and sex addiction is in these two syllables. She dumps him, he falls into an abyss he cannot crawl out of. Or doesn't want to crawl out of.

When Arjun Reddy is fresh in our minds and on our Prime screens, what business does a Kabir Singh have? Is it still 2010 when the Jio boom hadn't taken over India and made fast internet reality in every middle-class Indian home?

The trailer of Kabir Singh is an answer in itself. If you have seen Arjun Reddy, you will see that every single frame from the original is replicated in the trailer of Kabir Singh. So much is the sameness that even Shahid Kapoor and Kiara Advani's body language and expressions are exact copy of Vijay Deverakonda and Shalini Pandey from the original. The hairstyles are the same, the get-up is the same, the mannerisms are the same, the scenes are the same. So why watch Kabir Singh?

Shahid Kapoor has impressed the audience with his addict act in Udta Punjab, his last hit. In between, his films have all sank without a trace. For the lead actor and his director, Kabir Singh is an exercise in going back to the comfort zone. The zone that you know you are good in. For people in the creative fields, there is nothing worse than that. Will Kabir Singh give us a reason to leave OUR comfort zones of the home and go to a theatre? Hopefully. There's Arjun Reddy to fall back on otherwise.